A Quote by Henry Adams

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

Henry Adams

Quote Topics

Few Mean Means Say Says Slippery Thought Very Words

Quote Author

Henry Adams
American - Historian
February 16, 1838 - March 27, 1918

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

Henry Adams

Few people know what they mean when they say, "I love you." ... Well, what does the word love mean? It means total interest. I think the reason very few people really fall in love with anyone is they're not willing to pay the price. The price is you have to adjust yourself to them.

Katharine Hepburn

The thing about the 600 words, I mean some day, you can do a very, very, very hard day's work and not write a word, just revising, or you would scribble a few words.

J. K. Rowling

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.

Ursula K. Le Guin

I have this theory about words. There's a thousand ways to say "Pass the salt". It could mean, you know, "Can I have some salt?" or it could mean, "I love you.". It could mean, "I'm very annoyed with you". Really, the list could go on and on. Words are little bombs, and they have a lot of energy inside them.

Christopher Walken

There's a slippery slope in regard to authority. If you say that the history in Genesis is not true, then you can just take man's ideas as true. When you go outside of Scripture, why shouldn't you just reinterpret what marriage means? So our emphasis is on the slippery slope regarding authority.

Ken Ham

I am looking forward very much to getting back to Cambridge, and being able to say what I think and not to mean what I say: two things which at home are impossible. Cambridge is one of the few places where one can talk unlimited nonsense and generalities without anyone pulling one up or confronting one with them when one says just the opposite the next day.

Bertrand Russell

He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts. He selects that language which will convey his ideas in the most explicit and direct manner. He tries to compress as much thought as possible into a few words. On the contrary, the man who talks everlastingly and promiscuously, who seems to have an exhaustless magazine of sound, crowds so many words into his thoughts that he always obscures, and very frequently conceals them.

Washington Irving

If you cannot say what you mean, your majesty, you will never mean what you say and a gentleman should always mean what he says.

Peter O'Toole

Wild at Heart made a few people angry-they thought I was exploiting women by showing that when a woman says no she really means yes.

Laura Dern

To use many words to communicate few thoughts is everywhere the unmistakable sign of mediocrity. To gather much thought into few words stamps the man of genius.

Arthur Schopenhauer

I'm very much afraid I didn't mean anything but nonsense. Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them; so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer means. So, whatever good meanings are in the book, I'm glad to accept as the meaning of the book.

Lewis Carroll

We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.

Eric Hoffer

When a poem is really finished, you can't change anything. You can't move words around. You can't say, 'In other words, you mean.' No, that's not it. There are no other words in which you mean it. This is it.

W. S. Merwin

A multitude of words is probably the most formidable means of blurring and obscuring thought. There is no thought, however momentous, that cannot be expressed lucidly in 200 words.

Eric Hoffer

Curiously enough, it seems to be only in describing a mode of language which does not mean what it says that one can actually say what one means.